1. Field of the Invention
The present invention broadly relates to the field of electronic commerce and global network information management services, and particularly, to a system and method for creating a unified commercial real estate data model through collection, distribution and use of information in connection with commercial real estate and web-based information systems that facilitate the buying and selling of commercial real estate. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for providing communication and analytical tools that interface with a commercial real estate database and support commercial real estate transactions between parties. These communication and analytical tools include: 1) a survey tool; 2) a commercial real estate transaction tool; 3) a tour scheduling tool; 4) an activity summary tool; 5) a tool for analyzing commercial real estate data; and 6) a map search tool.
With respect to the map search tool, the present invention provides a system and method for providing, through a single integrated interface, remote access to integrated databases containing, for example, commercial real estate data, and for remote access to applications that manipulate the data in the integrated databases. Specifically, the present invention relates to the retrieval of geographic-based data from the databases using shapes drawn on a map, or alternatively on an aerial photograph.
2. Background of the Invention
Whether measured in terms of variety, volume, or value of transactions, the market for commercial real estate information is vast. In 1998, the U.S. commercial real estate market had: hundreds of thousand of leasing transactions, with an aggregate value of more than $200 billion, and had tens of thousands of sales transactions, with an aggregate value of $285 billion. In the same year, lenders, provided tens of thousands of commercial real estate loans, with an aggregate net value of more than $110 billion, according to the Federal Reserve Board. F. W. Dodge reports that during 1998, construction commenced on 766 million square feet of commercial properties with an aggregate value of $52 billion. Finally, vendors made $10 billion in sales to tenants who were moving to new facilities, according to the Corporate Realty Design and Management Institute.
Despite its enormous size, the real estate industry in many ways is a backwater. In the current market, real estate brokers perform various functions. To begin with, individuals, institutions, and owner/users buy and sell buildings. The aggregate sales value of commercial properties sold in the United States in one year is about $285 billion, according to a Federal Reserve estimate. Most transactions occur through the use of a commercial real estate broker, whose job is to list the asset for sale, disseminate the correct information, respond to questions and requests for specific information, attempt to create an auction atmosphere, and complete and close a sale. Brokers typically receive between 1% and 6% of the sales value of the property, with the lower commission rates corresponding to higher sales values.
Below a level of, about, $5 million, sales are typically locally sourced to local users or individuals or small institutions. Beyond $5 million and, more acutely, past $10 million, the market becomes more regional as the buyer base narrows. Above $25 million, the market becomes institutional in the sense that the potential buyers are REITs, pension funds, advisors, or corporations. At this level the market becomes national and, to some extent, international. It is critically important to limit the dissemination of information in this context.
In addition, every building that is not owner occupied must be leased. Brokers usually take one side of the transaction as either the listing broker or the tenant rep. Listing brokers list the space for the property owner and attempt to drum up interest in the space with flyers and information packages. Brokers also typically specialize in a type of property and in a region, so their added value is in knowing who is most likely to want a specific space for lease. Tenant representatives usually represent the tenant and are specifically looking for space for expansion or to enter a new market. Tenant representatives consolidate all the listing information from the listing brokers in a market for a specific type of space, conform the package, and help the user make an informed decision. Many individual brokers do both.
The real estate industry is so large and fragmented that, historically, there has been no meaningful national research. Research that does exist is typically local or regional in nature, frequently limited to occupancy and rental rate information, and most of the time only marginally accurate. From market to market, different data was kept by the administrative assistant for a couple of local brokers, who would then hold that out as proprietary knowledge in that particular market. Ten years ago, this was out of date; by today's standards, it is completely useless. With the trend towards much more liquid real estate markets and the dominance of large regional and national tenants and capital providers, the need for accurate national data has become acute.
At present, however, transaction costs are high, and information is non-standardized as states, cities, and local communities all have their own rules and regulations. To add to the milieu of confusion, investors and owners frequently have different tax statuses, so comparisons are never apples-to-apples. Brokers typically use this to their advantage—their pitch becomes “I am the only one that knows all this stuff, and if you don't use me, what you don't know can hurt you.” A helpful way to think about this would be to imagine that each securities brokerage firm maintained its own exchange, instead of them all feeding the NYSE and NASDAQ. Clients would have little chance of getting the best execution since there would be a closed market only. To some extent, real estate has operated this way historically, except that each of the brokerage firms referred to these closed networks as “proprietary information.”
Over the past 15 years, however, a new class of investors and users has opened up the business. National institutional owners like the REITs and large ERISA managers like Jones Lang LaSalle have created a need for standardized, reliable information and processes. This, in turn, has led to a mass consolidation among the smaller local and regional brokers. This trend toward a national information standard is becoming more powerful. The old model of the local power broker is being replaced by a single-point-of-contact model for national real estate companies, in which client needs are met with just one relationship. The only way a small brokerage firm can level the field is by having access to the same information as the larger brokers.
It has been long demonstrated in other contexts, e.g., the securities industry, that distributed information improves market efficiency. In the securities industry each broker has a system on their desk that gives them access to standardized, accurate securities pricing information. Largely, information is collected by the exchanges and consolidated into a standard system of quotes and news. The vendors of the information try to figure out the best way to graphically present the information and to price the data feed to maximize revenue. For the most part, the major quote and information providers are all providing the same thing. The present invention relates to a way of applying this approach to real estate information. By centralizing and standardizing the information, it has made it much more user friendly and, hence, valuable. It has created a digital exchange with itself as the sponsor.
To facilitate transactions, industry participants must have extensive, accurate, and current information. Members of the commercial real estate and related business community require daily access to current data such as rental rates, vacancy rates, tenant movements, supply, new construction, absorption rates, and other important market developments to carry out their businesses effectively. Such data collection is time-consuming, as shown by a 1996 study, which found that commercial real estate professionals spent 40% of their workday collecting and analyzing information on the real estate market. Therefore, there is a need for a unified commercial real estate data model to develop an efficient marketplace, where members of the commercial real estate and related business community can exchange information, evaluate opportunities using national standardized data, and interact with each other on a continuous basis.
The parties involved in the commercial real estate and related business community that require extensive information, include: sales and leasing brokers; property owners; property management firms; design and construction firms; real estate developers; real estate investment trusts; investment banks; commercial banks; investors and asset managers; government agencies; mortgage-backed security issuers; appraisers; media; tenant vendors; building services vendors; communications providers; insurance companies and institutional advisors.
The commercial real estate related business community has yet to develop an efficient marketplace because of the fragmented approach to gathering and exchanging information within the marketplace, i.e., the lack of a unified data model. Various organizations, including hundreds of brokerage firms, directory publishers, and local research companies, have attempted to collect data on specific territories and to develop software to analyze the information they have independently gathered. This fragmented approach resulted in duplication of effort in the collection and analysis of information, excessive internal cost, non-standardized data with varying degrees of accuracy and comprehensiveness, and a large information gap.
The creation of an efficient digital marketplace for commercial real estate requires a unified data model—an infrastructure of a national, standardized database, accurate and comprehensive research capabilities, and intensive, real-time participant interaction. The global information network or Internet can help maximize interaction among participants in a marketplace. The Internet has emerged as a mass communications and commerce medium enabling millions of people worldwide to share information, create communities among individuals with similar interests, and conduct business electronically. International Data Corporation projects that the number of Internet users will grow from 100 million in 1998 to 320 million in 2002. In addition to its emergence as a mass communications medium, the Internet has features and functions that are unavailable in traditional media, which enable users to: communicate or access enormous amounts of information at low cost and without geographic limitation; access dynamic and interactive content on a real-time basis; and communicate and interact instantaneously with a single individual or with entire groups of individuals.
Along with the impressive overall growth of the Internet, business-to-business usage is also growing rapidly, as businesses are increasingly leveraging the Internet's ability to reach clients globally, deliver personalized content, and open new distribution channels. Forrester Research projects business-to-business electronic commerce to grow from $17 billion in 1998 to $327 billion in 2002.
It is in this context that there remains a need for a system and method for creating a unified commercial real estate data model through collection, distribution and use of information in connection with commercial real estate and web-based information systems that facilitate the buying and selling of commercial real estate. The collection, distribution, and use of information would preferably include the ability to search all commercial real estate data, across multiple markets, geographic regions, brokerage listings, and data categories and types. The desired system and method would also preferably indicate the timeliness and reliability of the information, and would present the information through intuitive, convenient user interfaces.
The present invention also relates to a method and system for listing and brokering a commercial real estate and its financial derivatives. An underlying principle of commodities, equities, or bond trading is that the asset sought to be traded have an intrinsic value which can be determined, usually by a market exchange, and that that value will shift based upon the vagaries of the market. The determination of market value can be aided by systems such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,761, System for Centralized Processing of Accounting and Payment Functions, issued Dec. 15, 1987 to Sharpe et al., and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,018, also for a System for Centralized Processing of Accounting and Payment Functions, and issued Jun. 22, 1993 to Sharpe et al. These systems merely provide a revenue or cost value, which can then be used by analysts in determining a market value for the listed commodity. The ability to extract historical financial and market information, and to evaluate shifts due to events that pressure those markets, has been addressed by such art as U.S. Pat. No. 5,414,838 for A System for Extracting Historical Market Information with Condition and Attributed Windows, issued May 9, 1995 to Kolton et al. Again, the element of speed in reacting to the vagaries of the market provides the asset trading markets with winners and losers on a day to day basis. Transaction time for financial markets has been addressed by such art as U.S. Pat. No. 5,420,405 for a Secure, Automated Transaction System that Supports an Electronic Currency Operating in Mixed Debit and Credit Modes, issued to Norman E. Chasek on May 30, 1995.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,524 to Hunt, et al. describes a Method and System for Listing, Brokering, and Exchanging Carrier Capacity in which listing, brokering, and exchanging a commodity requires identifying a plurality of characteristics of the particular commodity, and then entering those characteristics into the database of a data processing system utilizing a real-time clock. An exchange market for the commodity is established based upon a pre-selected set of its characteristics. After a market price for the commodity has been set, a class (or classes) of financial derivatives is established together with a financial exchange market for those derivatives. The characteristics of the derivatives comprise: a common descriptive link between varied commodity types; a contract length that runs from the purchase date of the contract to the performance date for the commodity; and, a contract price.
In the context of commercial real estate, there has heretofore been insufficient reliable information to create derivatives based on the commercial real estate market. It is an object of the present invention to provide a system and method that support the creation of financial derivatives for commercial real estate. More specifically, it is an object of the present invention to shift the financial burden of long-term leases through the financial markets by providing an opportunity to hedge against the future. While the landlords would have to guarantee that capacity will be available at a time when it is required, the financial burden of the landlords will be minimized by making capital available up front in exchange for capacity later. A further object of the present invention is to provide the financial markets with an ability to trade commercial real estate space as a tangible commodity by providing the method and means for doing so.
There is also a need in the prior art for real-time remote access to geographic-based data, such as commercial real estate data. In addition, there is a need for an intuitive and convenient tool for searching and accessing the geographic-based data.
As used herein, “Commercial Real Estate” means any real property, including, without limitation, office, retail and industrial rental space, a building, and multiple buildings for use by a business entity, or one or more facilities or buildings that a business entity occupies for the purpose of conducting its operations on a routine and ongoing basis.
“Market” means a geographic region, e.g., the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, that includes all buildings or potential buildings available for business occupancy, with boundaries that are consistent with U.S. Census standards and that are generally accepted definitions of metropolitan areas.
“Submarket” means a geographic area as a subset of a Market and that includes buildings or potential buildings available for business occupancy, with boundaries generally accepted by local real estate professionals.
“Grade” means the designated quality of real estate on a relative scale of quality, based primarily upon a generally accepted classification structure, such as Class A, B or C properties. Real estate experts familiar with the classification systems and with generally accepted standards can provide this “grade” designation.
“Rent” means the annual amount paid by a business entity for rights to occupy real estate.
“Vacancy Rate” means the percentage of square feet that is offered for lease in a market, submarket, or building.
“Absorption” means the net reduction in vacant square feet over a defined period (typically, twelve-months) resulting from new tenants, new construction, and lease terminations.
“Comparable Real Estate” means real estate that is approximately equivalent in Rent, Grade, Use, and/or location to the business entity's Real Estate.
“Area” means an indicator of economic attractiveness of the submarket where the real estate is located; and it is based, for example, upon rents, vacancy, absorption rate, and/or other measures of economic attractiveness of a submarket.
“Risk” means an indicator of the financial, market and environmental exposure of real estate and of the financial, market and environmental risks associated with the employees and the business entity's occupancy in the real estate.
“Owner” or “Owner's representative” means anyone acting on behalf of an owner, including for example the owner's broker, the owner's property manager, and the owner herself.
“Seller” or “Seller's representative” means anyone acting on behalf of a seller or potential seller, including for example the seller's broker, the seller's property manager, and the seller herself. The seller represented by the seller or seller's representative includes potential sellers and those actually selling.
“Buyer” or “Buyer's representative” means anyone acting on behalf of a buyer or potential buyer, including for example the buyer's broker and the buyer himself. The buyer represented by the buyer or buyer's representative includes potential buyers and those actually buying.
“Confidentiality agreement” means a legal, binding contract requiring parties to the agreement to treat certain information as private and not for publication. For example, in the context of real estate, a confidential agreement requires that a buyer keep a property listing confidential in return for viewing the property listing. As used herein, “non-disclosure agreement” is synonymous with “confidentiality agreement.” Executing and submitting confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements can occur, for example, by clicking-through an “accept” button for an agreement posted online or by exchanging electronic documents having electronic signatures.